Conscious Eating: Why 'vegan' is an add-on Menu

From your favourite KFC Zinger burger to a meaty bowl at your go to restaurant, vegan food players are giving customers a whole lot of choices. 2019 will also see a trend that sees vegan ‘junk food’ replacing traditional meat-based staples. Also, restaurants have also included a menu focusing on the vegan customers.

Waking up to Awareness

Vegan eating is all about awareness. A lot of us eat food because that’s what we have been grown eating and that’s how we develop taste. There are three main reasons for people turning vegan - the first being ethical wherein people don’t want to hurt animal and find an alternate option to it, second is health awareness as more and more people are willing to eat fresh, locally grown foods and ingredients, third is obviously the environmental issues because there are lots of greens being killed and harmed making changes in the environment. Hence, we need to be conscious while eating our food.

“It is just the matter of changing the mindset, trying alternatives,” shares Susmitha of Carrots India which is India’s first vegan restaurant mentioning that they have a very waste menu because the idea is to have something for everyone. It depends on person to person. “Our sloppy joe burger, aubergine mushroom platter and obsessive chocolate disorder are one of the most ordered items on the menu,” she added further.

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A similar story came up of Udaipur based Abhishek Sinha who loved animals and rescue them whenever there is a need. But being a meat eater himself there was always an imbalance between what his heart would say and what his tastes prefers. It was during his engineering days in Pune, back in 2003 he came along several university researches where he found a research on tissue culture based meat without making animals die and make real meat out of it. And, that’s how he together with his brother started Good Do in India serving food made from mock meat. “There is vast difference between what vegan restaurants are doing and what we are doing. We are doing it to make it comfort food and not a high end organic stuff. Also, we are targeting the meat eaters who are trying to lower the meat intake,” shares Sinha who sells close to 12000- 15000 packets every day on the manufacturing front.

Going with the Trend

Known for serving vegan delight before independence Mumbai based Kailash Parbat is bringing its much talked about vegan restaurant to India. The group was already running a vegan restaurant in Lisbon, Portugal with the name of ‘Veganapati’. “We are also planning to launch a vegan restaurant in India. We are already running ‘Veganapati’ and we want to grow it in India. We are doing modern vegan food with Indian twist to it,” shares Kamlesh Mulchandani, the third gen into the business of food known for serving vegetarian food for ages. “We wanted to bring it to the major cities in India including; Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi in 2019,” he added.

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Also, there are many restaurants in top cities already including a vegan menu into the a-la-carte option. “We also intend to introduce a whole new thoughtfully curated healthy menu which includes Vegan food too,” shared a media statement by Arbour Food and Drink Pune.

Thus, with new happenings at restaurants we surely can see that everything is in place to make 2019 a year of vegan treats.